GREEN IDEAS

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn yesterday announced a report recommending broad changes affecting co-ops, condos and all other New York City buildings that face the expected floods, destructive wind, blackouts and other extreme-weather results of climate change.

Among the proposals, which the mayor and speaker said they would pursue immediately, are Building Code upgrades, zoning changes and having buildings prepare emergency plans that include backup power and water. Earlier this week, the mayor additionally proposed a City registry of the most vulnerable citizens to better coordinate assistance and rescue.

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Con Edison has a pool of about $1.5 million available to help co-ops, condominiums and other New York City buildings convert from oil to gas. Incentives vary based on the size of the building. For example, buildings that have between five and 75 units can get up to $22,500 for the conversion process and up to $5,000 for purchasing a highly efficient boiler. For larger buildings, customized incentives are available.

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New York City has extended its deadline for property owners and managers to provide their buildings' 2013 energy-benchmarking data, following a cyberattack late last month at the U.S. government website where that information is entered into a database. Buildings falling under the benchmarking requirements now have until May 31. However, buildings wishing to use the government's spreadsheet template for entering information into that "Portfolio Manager" database, rather than entering information manually, have only until May 15 due to the planned release of an upgraded database.

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A major challenge when submetering a building is that workers must get access to each apartment. If crews have trouble doing that, it can delay the entire process, adding to the final cost. Installing submeters in 132 units, as was done at the Upper East Side co-op Tower East, can take two months, as resident schedules need to be accommodated and damage to paneling and walls might need to be repaired.

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Every night, Zoltan Papp would watch the sun go down from his office at a 100-unit Greenwich Village cooperative and the floodlights in the backyard flicker on. They would stay on all night, casting chiaroscuro shadows in the empty outdoor space until a timer switched them off at dawn the next morning.

Needless to say, the co-op board found monthly electricity bill an eyesore. With lights on around the clock in the lobby, corridors, elevators and staircases of 51 Fifth Avenue — familiar as the exterior location for Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt's home on Mad About You — it was obvious to the building superintendent no one had ever seriously looked at what the building could do to eliminate the unnecessary electricity costs.

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At 1150 Park Avenue, an 89-unit Manhattan co-op, the board decided to convert to a dual-fuel system that could run on No. 2 oil or natural gas, says Daniel Storr, the board treasurer. Storr reports that his building and others in the neighborhood had a deal with Con Edison to service the area as long as they made necessary internal changes to accommodate gas service.

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In 2011, the Upper East Side co-op Tower East took a major step toward improving its energy efficiency. It had always used a master-meter to track electricity usage, dividing the electric charges among residents based on their shares. The problem with relying only on a master-meter is that, because they never see an electric bill, residents tend to waste electricity. By installing a meter in each unit, residents know what they use and, consequently, have to pay more if they forget to turn their lights off. So how do co-op and condo boards convince them to switch from master meter to submeters?

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The 250-unit Normandy, located at 140 Riverside Drive on Manhattan's Upper West Side, recently phased out its old-style bulbs. For co-op board president Bennett Lincoff, convincing the other board members it was a good idea was easier than screwing in a light bulb. The fact is, according to energy experts and building managers, if you still have incandescent lighting in your building's public spaces, rather than compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs), you're probably wasting money.

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Very soon there will be no more No. 6 heating oil. By June 2015, buildings in the city will not be able to burn the smog-producing fuel. Lots of buildings have already switched to cleaner-burning No. 2 or No. 4 oil, or to natural gas. But there are plenty of buildings where co-op and condo boards are still wrestling with what to do next. If your cooperative or condominium is one of them, which path is right for your particular situation?

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Like your own co-op or condo over a certain size threshold has probably done, the two-building 110 Riverside Drive complex on West 83rd Street in Manhattan performed its required Local Law 87 energy audit last year. At the same time, its co-op board participated in a New York State program that offers monetary rebates to buildings that reduce energy use by a certain percentage.

In a previous article, we talked about how the board used that as a way to entice shareholders to invest in an energy-saving overhaul, or "retro-commissioning," of its HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and water systems. But what else did the co-op do — and what else would it like to do — to make itself more energy-efficient?

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